my child is a bad writer?

Question

My 5 year old cannot draw that well at all nor can she color very well. she colors out of the lines like a maniac and when drawing people or objects u cannot make the picture out at all. sometimes her people look ok but everything else looks sloppy. she knows her numbers and letters but she is not that good at writing them out(writes them crooked and mishapen). the teacher says she needs improvement on her art work and writing skills. any one else have this problem? any ideas on how to change this? thx

Answer 1

She is only 5, she may not be interested in writing right now, her fine motor skills may be a little behind the rest of her, you can try to involve her in activities that will fine tune these, cutting is great, help her cut out pictures and glue them to make a poster, finger painting might be a little more exciting, and I thought it nuts when one of my children's encouraged video games, about 30 minutes worth, to help develop these muscles. My granddaughter (5) likes dot to dot, I also filled a baking pan with sugar and had the kids make numbers with their finger if they were correct they got to lick their finger, worked every time.

Answer 2

My oldest had that problem. Just sit with her and color, draw, or write. Don't scold her, go on like it's a game. If she gets messy then say "I can do that," and do it. Then ask her if she can do your way, and when she does, brag, put it on the fridge, in a frame, a gift for daddy or grandma, etc. Let her know how proud you are of her. With a child, sometimes, bad attention is better than no attention, so that may be the problem. As far as the writing, my daughter would write(very sloppy if I may add) in mirrored image at first, but she out grew it. She wrote sloppy because she would let her mind out run her hand and try to keep up! Now on a good note, she is in high school with a 3.6 GPA, drum major in the band, and she is taking all accelerated classes. So maybe your daughter is so smart she has to express herself the best way a 5 year old(respectfully) knows how.

Answer 3

Try to determine if it is a matter of skill or interest. Many children at this age tend to be more sloppy if they are not particularly interested in coloring/writing. If this is the case, there are numerous fun practice books that you can gear towards her interests (i.e.- favorite characters) and you can set up a progress/reward chart to increase her attention to these types of activities. You can also encourage pre-writing skills through the use of painting (with a brush or with finger). This is sometimes more fun for the child and still develops the skills. Another way to try to get her to slow down is to make it a functional activity (i.e.- making a birthday card for a family member, writing a letter to a grandparent, helping you write the shopping list, etc.). Stress how much it will mean to you or the family member- and to take her time and concentrate. If you think her difficulty lies more with the motor skills involved in pre-writing tasks, you may want to request an Occupational Therapy evaluation to make a more definite determination and decide if she needs some extra help. My daughter received OT at school 2x/week for a year (first grade) and made wonderful progress (she does not qualify for services again this year). Good luck.

Answer 4

Seems to me like she is young enough that it may not be a huge concern, she may improve a lot with time.

Writing is a fine motor skill. What kinds of non-writing activities can you do to improve those skills? Maybe handling clay, or working with legos, or whatever (do some research on other fine motor activities) will get that part of the brain stimulated enough to improve her skills in writing along with it. The fact that she has trouble coloring, drawing, and writing letters, may mean that the skill sets go together, when one improves, the others will too, and learning to have better control of her hands and fingers will help all three problems. It also may be that she may never be really gifted at those things or is just a little rebel that will always express herself a little differently than other people. LOTS AND LOTS of great artists do not create images that are recognizable. Something else to think about, just ask any pharmacist or autograph hound how successful and talented doctors and celebrities are. Perhaps you agree that they are some of the most gifted people among us...and yet how hard it is to make out their handwriting.

Does she have TIME to do the work that she really wants to do? Or does she feel rushed? Maybe she isn't turning out quality work because she feels like she is in a hurry. If she is impatient with herself, or things that she needs to do things fast then she will not do her best. This would be different than just being haphazardly free-spirited about things where she can do the work and just isn't all that interested in how it turns out. Knowing if this is part of it, and which is the problem, will help you address it.

Poor handwriting sometimes indicates learning disabilities, such as dysgraphia. But maybe I am way off base. Just do some research.

There is the little adapter thing that goes on the pencil to make it bigger for little fingers. Or you can use fatty markers and crayons or big chunky pens.

Seems to me also that since the printed English alphabet is pretty simple shapes, simply practicing lines and circles will boost her skills, then after she is making good lines and circles, start taking parts of the circle away, add the line, to make a capital G or connecting two half circles to make an S. Maybe she can practice drawing circles and lines without it being writing. You can talk about the olympics, for example and try to practice her circles by drawing the five rings. Or talking about sports and drawing various kinds of balls. You can ask her to draw a simple face to express her feelings. Can she draw a simple smiley or frowny face? Again, sticks and circles. OR you can play tic-tac-toe where she does all the pencil work. Between the board and the X's and O's she will get lots of practice. Also hangman. Also making music notes (sticks and circles) and the old treble clef.

When her sticks and circles are in good shape, move on to putting them together or modifying the circle into the right kind of curve to turn them into letters. Lowercase a is just a circle and a stick. Same with p, d, b, etc. Lowercase e is part of a circle and a stick.

I have always approached writing like drawing with small kids. If they can draw a simple picture by looking at it, they can draw a letter by looking at it, it's no big deal just because that letter means something, it is just another image. Sometimes just writing in very clear print, then let her try to copy it. Or writing in ONE color marker and let her trace it in another color.

Whatever you do, make your time helping her pleasant and fun, no pressure and not work-like. Use the time to help improve your relationship with her. Get some pretty gel-pens or metallic markers and black construction paper to write on. Also experiment with paint and brushes, or fingerpaint. Maybe she just isn't coordinated with using a tool in her hand. Check how she does with fingerpaint, using her own finger as the tool, less to fiddle with. If she draws or writes something you can't identify, rather than saying "What IS this supposed to be?" say "Tell me about this!"

Best wishes! Be patient. Be encouraging. Don't let the teachers pressure her too much, and do your own research instead of just taking their word for everything. Keep in touch with each other about how you are each helping her.

Answer 5

A 5 year old doesn't quite yet have the coordination to do letters and numbers well. You can teach her by getting a notebook with wide-ruled or double-ruled pages and have her practise writing inside the lines. Buy an alphabet book that shows how the letters are supposed to look and have her copy them. Don't worry, it takes a while of practise to get it right.

Answer 6

When I was five I couldn't even draw stick people.
I don't even think I could scribble good. =)
Now, people say that I should become an artist because my artwork is amazing.
So don't worry about it. She's still a baby, so don't worry at all.
Let her color out of the lines, its no big deal, trust me.
And about her writing skills, don't worry about that either.
Just pratice with her or get her a tutor. She'll be fine, she will.

Answer 7

Most children experience diffuculty with these type of thigns at that age but if after several months of school and working with her at home with no improvement you may want to talk to your pediatrician about DYSGRAPHIA. Look it up. It will help you understand wether or not she has a true problem or is just a regular 5 year old.

Answer 8

Fine motor skills develop at different rates. I volunteer in my daughter's kindergarten class and this is quite evident from what I see. I actually had a mom ask me how she can help her son's penmanship. I gave her a handful of worksheets for her son to work on.

I'm sure the teacher wasn't intending to hurt your feelings, but was merely pointing out what your daughter needs assistance in.

You can help your daughter by giving her exercises to help develop her fine motor skills. Getting fun workbooks such as Scissors Skills and Getting Ready for Kindergarten (Carson-Dellosa Publishing) will help her do so. I used both these books for my daughters when they were in pre-school (4 yrs old). The books helped them with hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, following directions, pasting inside the lines, etc.

Also, getting an alphabet and numbers book in which your daughter has to trace them will aid in not only learning to write her alphabet and numbers, but in the development of her fine motor skills in general.

Your daughter's fine motor skills will develop. It will take time and practice, practice, practice, but before you know it, she'll be writing legibly and her artwork will be masterpieces!

Answer 9

She is only 5 years olds and her writing can look like this:
dran
don

(ran out of room and went to next line to finish writing name with a backwards B.)

Children are not able to exceed their skills with out proper pratice time. Pratice isn't just giving them paper, pincile and saying write something. That attends to be boring and pointless. Even to adults it can be.

Make it fun.

Creat a message board in your kitchen or at his door for her to write on: Daily planner, homework schedule, drawing his "personalized" picture and name on her bedroom door board, notes and ideas to the family or himself.

Sugguestion for teacher (which this would be good parent volunteer in classroom assignment) is to design individual mail box's (shoe boxes, cereal boxes or crates) so children can be encouraged to write and to other classmates, teachers and parents. Whether they can have a "mail carrier" assigned that week, the students individually place them in the box or the teacher will do it.

Have her make his own grocery list when going to store. Encourage her to ask how to spell and sound out words. Instead of spelling it out, sound it out "grocery" would be taking the sounds of each letter for the child to think what letter does that sound like. Then have it written down so can visually see the word, which will imprint over time in memorie.

Encourage to read her writing or interpret their picture before you do it.

Don't expect immediate correctness in young children's writing or spelling. It becomes more standard as they write and read as they learn more about spelling patterns.

She is only 5 and this is quite normal for her stage in writing development. Not many 5 year olds I work with will color only inside the lines and make "understandable" pictures to adult kind. I work wih 2-5 year olds and then 6-12 year olds.

Answer 10

Only practice will help! i have 4 kids they all get better as they get older! My six year old is just now starting to have better small motor skills! Try using small scissors etc. cut out lines you draw for them! Anything to use the hands over and over! Good luck!